How much you sharpen depends on what your output device is. Meaning, is it for the web, for an inkjet printer, laser printer, Frontier printer, etc. Then you have to throw in the variable of how good the output device is. In my experience, there are two sharpening packages worth using. Nik Sharpener and FocalBlade. Nik Multimedia's Sharpener is a good program, but they insanely overpriced this product. $80 for the home version and around $330 for the pro version. FocalBlade, on the other hand, has far more control over the sharpening with settings tailored for print or monitor and the ability to compensate for white and black halos, account for the amount of detail, use masks ... etc. It's a fantastic sharpening package with an insane amount of control if you need it and only costs $30. If you want to sharpen in Photoshop alone, then I'd suggest a Luminosity-Unsharp Mask sharpen. It's what I use when I'm not using FocalBlade. It's fast, doesn't create halos unless you really punch the sharpening up and it's easy. Simply put, copy the image you want to sharpen, change its blending mode to Luminosity and then apply your sharpening there. You normally use a lot more unsharp mask there than you normally would (for web size images, I find myself usually in the AMOUNT=150%, RADIUS=0.4, THRESHOLD=0 area). FOr printing to inkjet with a larger file those would tend to go up to around 175-250%, 0.8-1.0, 0-1. -=>Donald